We’re clearing our shelves for more books this time of  year.  So here’s a list of books that we’re putting up for sale. Contact me at childofnarnia@yahoo.com if you’d like to view the books before buying them.

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Joy, dd9, wrote this piece for a writing assignment early this year.  I thought she had given some nifty descriptions of the situation, writing from a first person’s point of view. Well, enjoy!

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The Terrible Plague of London

I wasn’t going to celebrate my birthday in 1665. My mind rang with the same thing : It has arrived! The great plague has arrived! It’s evening and as I went to bed, the rumble of wheels trundle into my mind’s ear. Another 20 people have made a pathway into the sky, leaving us alone. Till now, my family is still safe from the jaws of death.

“Kirsten! Listen carefully now. I want you to cover yourself and go to Gwyneth’s bakery and take home 2 loaves of bread. Hurry! ”

I scurried along to the bakery, wishing that someone would draw the curtains between life and death, wishing that Mother hadn’t sent me on this gruesome paved errand. My nose picked up a strong scent of sulfur which caused my feet to lose control and topple me flat against a child, still healthy (thank God).

A few minutes later, I was in the shop. I flung the coins into a bowl of …what was that liquid anyway? Vinegar! Uggh! I scuttled to eavesdrop on a conversation between two men. Mother says it’s evil to eavesdrop but I think I won’t hear badly of myself, since the lecture is about the plague.

“Yes Kerl, indeed! The doctors…”

“Their funny costume…yes, Frederich, go on.”

“Yes…no…yes…and the leather bird mask is filled with herbs.”

Kerl added to his friend’s speech. “And the medicine does a fat lot of good as well as burning herbs and bonfires.”

That was all the information I needed for inquisitive 10 year old Jesheka, one year older than I was.

When I reached the door of dread, my father was bending over to burn several herbs. I let out a cry , recognizing that some fellow in my house had the plague.

“Lewis!” I cried.

“Nay girl,” said father, “T’is Angus.”

Angus , my brother in all but blood. I heard a brush scraping on our door. Angus’ parents had been swept away by the dark curtain of death and since then, Angus stayed with us. Lewis was Angus’ twin brother, but unlike him, had no delight in animals.

Soon, the doctor came. He was wearing the odd costume the two men had described,

‘Are you a real man, or a hawk?” asked Jesheka.

T’was rude of Jesheka but that jolly old doctor smiled and said, “Hawk.”

That kind soul brought laughter back into our family.

The doctor, or Linkenel, stayed with us for a week and no black spots appeared on Angus.

“He lives!” croaked poor Linkenel, “He (hiccup) lives!”

Soon,  Angus , Jesheka and I were able to play in Angus’ room. Lewis called us babies but that really does not matter. The room of waiting burst open into a spring bud. “

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Prayers like gravel

flung  at the sky’s

window, hoping to attract

the loved one’s

attention. But without

visible plaits to let

down for the believer

to climb up,

to what purpose open

that casement?

I would have refrained long since

But that peering once

Through my locked fingers

I thought that I detected

the movement of a curtain.

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Sometime ago, I learnt to distinguish between devotional times and devotional living. The writer who made this clear to me was Sally Clarkson, homeschooling  mother , writer and women’s groups’ speaker. She wrote that we are to ever live before God- being conscious of His presence as we go about our daily activities of working, cleaning, interacting with colleagues at the office and driving on the roads.  Another Singaporean pastor put it succinctly when he mentioned that “doing devotions” aren’t imperative to the Christian life.  What we need to return to, he mused, is  a life that is consciously lived out in God’s presence.

The autobiographical work, Nine Jewels, is a book that tells of such devotional living.  The writer tells her tale of a childhood in politically stressful times in Indonesia and of her coming of age as a young girl who hears God’s call to service. She writes about  the transplantation from her beloved homeland with its familiar smells, sounds and close-knit community to the Discipleship Training Centre in Singapore.  She writes about  her journey as a pastor’s wife, mother of two daughters and her work as Bible translator, speaker and writer.

God is depicted as the One who is sovereign over all events, weaving His purpose into her life through the ordinary rather than the dramatic. In this sense, this book is every person’s story, because the same God also works into the ordinariness of our lives to bring about his purpose for us- conformity to the image of His Son.  At the same time, Nine Jewels is Lydia’s Story as she describes in rich detail the unfolding of her journey from child to girl to woman. Her voice, at once both traditionally Asian and modern, gentle and powerful,  speaks of the loss of a  mother, the fierce love of a father who defies tradition and social pressure when he sends a daughter to college,  the birth pangs of a nation emerging from colonialism and her personal journey for belonging and for identity as a woman.

The writer employs the motif of jewelry to narrate her tale.  You can almost picture her holding each article up before you as she unravels her tale much like in the oral tradition of Asian storytelling. Each piece of jewelry is like a memorial stone, remembering a beloved  and marking a life-changing .

The narrative is held together by themes of identity and family.   Her father’s poignant reminder to her when she tells him that she has to leave their home to pursue to Singapore is to follow “the voice which is calling you” but also that she must remember where her homeland lies. Lydia writes of her father who reared his children with his mother-in-law when her mother dies, defied social mores by bringing his daughter to deep-sea fishing expeditions and football matches and who adamantly withstood the disapproval of relatives when  he sent his daughter to college.    She writes of her marriage to a deeply thoughtful man and of motherhood that came with much anticipation and joy.

The writer’s love for her homeland resounds in her detailed descriptions of her motherland.  She recounts the historical turmoil of post-colonial Indonesia: skirmishes with government soldiers ferreting communist guerrillas,  a failed coup and  violence against the Chinese. Her observations are interspersed with more personal  portraits of daily life as seen through the eyes of a  Javanese-Chinese child: watching Papa cut glass sheets,  grandmother’s medicine shop that smelt like a curry house, offering fruits and tea  to  her deceased mother on All Souls’ Day, kopitiams where locals discussed politics.

She also writes of loneliness that came with frequent relocations as a pastor’s wife.  In times  of loneliness, we are often tempted to plunge into a circus of activities to keep ourselves entertained and occupied. The writer suggests something quite the opposite. Let God  change the “seeds of loneliness” to  “positive aloneness”, exhorts Lydia.

In the preface to her book, Lydia writes that Nine Jewels was birthed from her desire to pass a legacy on to her own two daughters who were born and grew up in Malaysia.  “Though my homeland is foreign to them, I want them to feel the pulse of the nation. Its people, its struggles and its customs shaped the person I am, “she writes.  This book is indeed a legacy, not only to her daughters, but to every Christian who  is intent on seeing God’s hand in each bend in the road, in each dark thread and dry season. Without sermonizing, the writer ‘s story tells of a God who can be trusted with both the big and the small, the dramatic and the mundane. All of life is hallowed when we live deliberately before Him.

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I wish that someone would buy this book for me.  I read McMinn’s  “Growing Strong Daughters” some time back and gained a new perspective on how we can condition our daughters to the ways of the world when we could be nurturing them to be the unique strong individuals that God has created them to be.

McMinn  (professor of sociology at George Fox University in Oregon ) doesn’t dance around the feminist-vs- SAHM tree(haven’t we had enough of that?), but clears the underbrush and helps us see the path . This book is for women who are bent on being, well, women.

Women’s discourse has long been held up against the communication patterns of men, often as inferior or in the case of the r-feminist-superior. In both cases however, women’s discourse is seen as the Other -significant no doubt, as postmodern pc-ness would have it be.   But why be an Other? Why not just BE ?

I overheard several  women sometime back in church, extolling the virtues of  “the objectivity of men’s minds” versus the subjectiveness of women’s thinking  i.e.mushy minds.  This line of thinking shows ignorance of the power of women’s discourse : the sustaining of cultural heritage through storytelling,  the perpetuation fo medicinal knowledge through culinary traditions, the art of community-making in post-industrial age urban spaces.  Women’s discourse with the richness of  personal narratives is so much a part of our lives. Furthermore the division between objectivity and subjectivity is farcical : how can one tell the difference between the two without imposing one’s personal and therefore subjective opinion upon that division?

If objectivity means being empirical, there’s still that niggling problem of the interpretation of “soft” sociological data.

McMinn validates the way women are made and discusses debates on men-women differences .The conclusion? She suggests that we are different in some ways and similar in some ways.  That comes as no surprise. Yet what is new in what McMinn is saying is that we shouldn’t even be thinking in terms of raising our daughters to be career women or homemakers who stay at home.  Each woman and girl has her God-  gift -whether it be sewing gorgeous clothes or pushing the buttons in corporations or blazing the race tracks. As mothers, our delight is in nurturing her to be that person God has meant her to be.

Do  we train our girls to “maximize their potential”  at the cost of family ? McMinn cites the examples of strong women who choose to stay at home to raise her children nad are accused of wasting their talents; of strong women who go to work in order to feed their families and of strong women who have to do a bit of both in order to keep their families afloat.  In short, she goes to the very heart of the SAHM-vs.-working mom debate :  does our motivation stem from  selfishness  or by that desire to use our gifts for others, for family.

She writes about the pressures young girls face due to  media and society that tell them how they should look, dress and behave.  We mothers have to be that rock, to be their strength and by being strong, help them wade through the bombardment of information and propaganda. A woman can’t do that if she’s not even sure of who God has meant her  to be.

This is great news. I’m just so glad that I don’t have to force her to wear either a dress or denim trousers. Clothes maketh not the woman. So what does? She draws on Scriptures to answer that question. So , go read.

Oh, and about that first book?  Buy it.

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